Where were all the women? If you wondered that at any point during the everlasting evening of the Academy Awards, you weren’t alone. Over at Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silverstein noted that there were long periods during the awards show in which there wasn’t a woman to be seen onstage, asking if there isn’t a way to have more women involved in the ceremony.

The minimal female presence onstage, however, is rather in keeping with the dearth of female nominees and winners at this year’s Oscars. In taking a closer look at how female filmmakers fared this year, it appears they are just as rare as you'd suspect amongst the lists of the Academy's nominees and winners. However, there were some bright spots and surprises amongst the often predictable awards.

Courtney Hunt, for example. Her gritty film Frozen River earned her a nomination for best original screenplay, and a best actress nomination for Melissa Leo, making it the 'Cinderella Story' of this years Oscars. Frozen River, Hunt’s debut film, started out as a short. It won an award at the New York Film Festival, however that recognition didn’t make it any easier for her to find money to make her film into a feature. Consequently, the feature length film was made for approximately only $500,000. One can only hope that this recognition by the Academy won’t have her scrounging for funding for her next film.

I wrote a while back about Loveleen Tandan, billed as the co-director of Slumdog Millionaire, and the lack of recognition she seemed to be getting. Well Jan Huttner’s campaign to have Tandan nominated along with Boyle was not entirely a success. I say not entirely because while Boyle was the sole nominee and winner of the Best Director award, Huttner’s ‘Slumdog brouhaha’ did bring the issue into the spotlight at least. Over at her blog, the Hot Pink Pen, her last word on the matter is that the Oscars missed out on a chance to make history by putting Tandan on the ballot alongside Boyle. She points out the sad, though not entirely surprising, fact that in eighty years of the Academy Awards, only three women have ever been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmuellen, Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola. Not only that, but of the men who make up all the rest of the nominees, only two have not been white men. John Singleton and Ang Lee are the only two men of colour to have been given the nod, and Lee made history in 2006 when he broke the colour barrier and won the award, the first time it wasn't given to a white male. It’s enough to make you wonder why we see the Oscars as the be-all-end-all of film awards when their scope is often so obviously narrow.

But back on the brighter side, women did fare better in the Documentary and Short categories. Tia Lessin and Ellen Kuras were both nominated in the Feature Documentary categories, for Trouble the Water and The Betrayal, respectively. In the Documentary Short category, there were women amongst the directors of three of the nominated films: Irene Taylor Brodsky for The Final Inch, Margaret Hyde for The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306, and Megan Mylan , who won the Oscar for her doc Smile Pinki. Elizabeth Marre was nominated alongside Olivier Pont for Manon on the Asphalt in the Short Film category, as well as Steph Green and Tamara Anghie for their short New Boy.

Among the more technical awards there were fewer female nominees, but Rebecca Alleway was nominated for her work as Set Decorator on The Duchess, and Revolutionary Road was given a nod for the work of Kristi Zea as Art Director and Debra Schutt as Set Decorator.

While there were no women amongst the Best Director nominees, three of the nominees for Best Actress were acknowledged for their work in films directed by women, and there were women amongst the producers for two of the Best Picture nominees, Kathleen Kennedy for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Donna Gigliotti for The Reader. It was Kennedy’s sixth nomination and Gigliotti’s second.

2008 was an exciting year for women in film, as I noted during the first dark days of January. Sadly, we didn’t see much of that excitement on the Academy’s stage. Even sadder is the fact that that isn’t much of a surprise. Most of the buzz around women at the Oscars usually tends toward that of the Best and Worst Dressed variety. But there’s always hope for next year. In the meantime, we can look out for those women like Courtney Hunt and Loveleen Tandan, whose Oscar nods will at least pave the way for bigger and better projects for them, and will also hopefully make the road a little easier for the female filmmakers following in their footsteps.

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